Yuri Lavrov's mother, Elizaveta Akimovna, took a greater risk, as she refused to emigrate and stayed home in Petrograd with her children.

In 1919, aged 14, Yuri Sergeevich Lavrov made his acting debut on stage of the Bolshoi Drama Theatre (BDT) in St. Petersburg.

Their son, Kirill Lavrov was born in Leningrad and was baptized at the nearby church of St. John the Divine of Leushinsky Monastery.

In the 1930s Leningrad (St. Petersburg) was shocked by a series of high-level political murders and Great Purges under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin.

Joseph Stalin targeted Leningrad for the purpose of degrading the superior reputation of the former Russian capital by destruction of its culture and society through extermination of intellectuals.

Soon the director of Bolshoi Drama Theatre (BDT, ru:Большой драматический театр имени Г. А. Товстоногова) Aleksei Dikij was arrested and imprisoned.

The artistic director of Kyiv Russian Drama, Konstantin Khokhlov was a good friend of both father and son Lavrovs.

That same year, upon Khokhlov's invitation, his son, Kirill Lavrov left Kyiv and returned to Leningrad to join the troupe of Bolshoi Drama Theatre (BDT).